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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26418016">having a coke with you</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account'>orphan_account</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Band of Brothers</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Post-Canon, based on having a coke with you by frank o hara hence the title, going on a museum date :), idk how to tag this they r just gross and in love, mature rating is just stayin on the safe side more info in the notes, my bf is the most incredible piece of art ive ever seen?, this is just david going damn my bf kind of fucks??</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 13:08:36</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,676</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26418016</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Joe takes off work and David pauses thesis-editing for art-viewing and dinner in Boston.</p><p>A Saturday in February 1949. Based off "Having a Coke With You" by Frank O'Hara</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Joseph Liebgott/David Kenyon Webster</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>53</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>having a coke with you</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>idek if i like this i was just Compelled to Write. written and edited all in one day so like. you know.</p><p>idk if this is like. need to know but the backstory is as follows: joe goes back to frisco post-war but its all a bit much so he buys a train ticket and books it to harvard. joe and david have a rough few months, but then they communicate and work out their issues and joe finally calls his family and says hes spending some time in boston. anyway so joes taxiing it up in boston while davids working on his degree (his thesis is on depictions of weimar berlin in english and german literature)</p><p>some content warnings: sexual content (its not porn or even explicit but like it is there) and they eat at a diner towards the end and i do describe the food and stuff</p><p>poem is at the end for your reading pleasure :)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It’s student housing, even if it’s off campus, so it’s drafty and the floors creak and the view from their windows is either dirty alley or dirty street. Joe complains about it incessantly, but whenever David suggests they move, he scowls and throws the nearest light object at him. The only exception to this is early in the morning, when they have just woken up and are still slow with sleep. In these instances, Joe pulls their blankets up and sinks into David’s arms and, maybe, if he can be bothered, reaches around and pinches David.</p><p>“‘M not gonna pack all my shit up just to move again when you graduate,” Joe says, voice muffled by the pillow. David’s thigh tingles from where Joe pinched him, but he refuses to move from their little warm cocoon in the bed.</p><p>“Who says I’m gonna move?”</p><p>Joe huffs out a laugh. “Nice try, shark boy. Ma told me you were asking about marinas in ‘Frisco.”</p><p>It’s true, he was, and there’s no point in pretending otherwise, so he hides his smile in the nape of Joe’s neck and breathes in deeply. Joe smells different as a civilian. It never fails to surprise David. He smells like cigarette smoke and gasoline and aftershave. The junction between Joe’s shoulder and neck is David’s favorite place, and if he had the choice, he’d live there forever. Fuck Cambridge and Boston and all of California and the rest of the world. He wants to live against Joe’s heartbeat.</p><p>The quiet stretches out long and languorous. David can tell by the way Joe’s breath has slowed that his eyes are closed again and he’s halfway back asleep. David would follow him, but it’s a nice moment, a poetic one. The type that he’d like to write about later, the type that he’ll read to Joe a few months down the line, the type that Joe thinks is ridiculous, the type that Joe loves. So he notes the dawn light is a watery gold, pale and lovely, and the February air is sharp in its frigidity. Under the blankets, David’s favorite quilt and the crocheted one Joe’s mother sent, the cold doesn’t touch them. Joe is warm under David’s hands, like he always is, and it’s comforting like a hearth. Hestia, David thinks, is the most underrated goddess. He’d relive every single day of the war ten times over if it meant he’d have Joe at the end of it.</p><p>Joe pushes back against David’s chest and murmurs something unintelligible. It means David is thinking too loud again, and David should sleep. It means<em> fuck’s sake, Web, it’s Saturday. Sleep in. </em></p><p>David obliges, and he dreams of the Austrian sun glinting off the lake and coloring Joe gold.</p><p>They wake back up at ten, and a half-hour later they finally manage to crawl out of bed. It’s David’s turn to make breakfast, which is good because Mrs. Liebgott calls that morning. He continues watching the eggs and listens in on Joe’s half of the conversation.</p><p>“Hey, Ma,” Joe says. “Nah, I’m not working today. Took a day off.” At this he meets David’s eyes and smirks. David grins back, then grins harder when Joe flushes bright red and mumbles, “Yes, Ma, David’s taking a day off, too.”</p><p>It’s a quick call, as they usually are. Neither of them can afford more than a few minutes of long-distance, but they still call every week, just to hear each other’s voices. David has no idea how Joe got through those first couple of months without saying anything to his family. He gets pissy if they miss one week.</p><p>As usual, the last minute or so, Mrs. Liebgott talks to David. She bypasses the greetings (it is a given that Joe’s well wishes were also David’s) and says, “He’s eating well?”</p><p>David laughs. “Yes. Eggs and toast this morning.”</p><p>“Good. I’m glad he’s taking the day off. He works too hard.”</p><p>He wants to brag that the day off was his idea, that he begged and begged and begged Joe to accompany him this weekend just to make sure he’d slow down and rest, but Joe’s too perceptive and already glaring daggers, so he settles on, “Yes, ma’am. I’m glad, too.”</p><p>“Stop with the ma’am, it’s Sarah. How’s the paper coming along?”</p><p>“Pretty well. Shouldn’t be too long now before I finish this draft. I can send you a copy if you like. I put you in the acknowledgements.”</p><p>She laughs sharply, the same way Joe does. “Goodness, David, I hardly did anything. I’ll wait for Joe to bring me a copy. You take care of him, all right? Take care of yourself, too.”</p><p>“I will,” he says with a smile. “Goodbye.” The line goes dead.</p><p>David plates the food, and they sit down at their shitty little kitchen table. He gets one bite in before Joe says, “You think she knows?”</p><p>David is fluent in English and German and Joseph Liebgott, and he’s proud of it, but there are some words in the Joseph Liebgott vocabulary that David can’t translate. Right now, Joe’s face is carefully blank, muscles tense in the way that deliberately aims to blot out any emotion. It’s frustrating when Joe gets like this, because it almost always leads to an argument, and David had really wanted to make this a good day for the both of them.</p><p>“I’m not sure,” he replies carefully. “If she does, she doesn’t seem to mind.”</p><p>Joe scowls. “Jesus, Web, what the fuck does that mean?”</p><p>“I don’t know, Joe, it just seems like she’s happy if you’re happy.” David puts a little bit of bite into the words, enough that Joe won’t feel like he’s being talked down to but not enough to piss him off.</p><p>“What kind of bullshit —” Joe spits out, then he shoves eggs in his mouth abruptly. It’s another gesture David can’t read, so he waits silently as Joe chews and swallows. In the end, all he says is, “That’s fuckin’ bullshit, Web.”</p><p>David has no illusions that he will ever know everything that goes on in Joe’s head. He can’t imagine what the war was like for him, and he doesn’t know what <em> this </em> is like for him, how it all intersects and fucks him over. He has no illusions that he will ever fix it, but the whole point of the day is to get him to unwind.</p><p>So he stretches his legs out under the table, lifts them up on Joe’s lap and leaves them there. He is quiet as he eats and watches Joe relax slightly, first in his legs then his shoulders then his face. When he’s as loose as he’ll get on his own, David says, “You know that diner you like? In the city?”</p><p>Joe squints at him. “The one by the library?”</p><p>“Yeah. I was thinking we could go there for dinner.”</p><p>The corners of Joe’s mouth pull up, and he ducks his head before David can see an actual smile bloom. “We should,” he says. “I fuckin’ deserve it, going to a museum for you. Fuck.”</p><p>David grins. “Yeah. You do."</p><p>They leave their apartment later than they intend, but David is not terribly disappointed. For the most part, he wants to make Joe happy and relaxed today, so if Joe would rather make out slowly and sloppily than get dressed, who is David to stop him?</p><p>It’s all for the best anyway, because when they get to the Museum of Fine Arts, Joe is loose and happy and allows himself to be pulled wherever David wants. David always likes to linger with the Sargent murals before going into the galleries, and Joe obliges with his usual lewd commentary, pointing to one of the female nudes and saying, “Nice tits,” pointing to Prometheus and whispering, “Is that what I look like when you fuck me?” into David’s ear. (David whispers, “Yeah, it really turns me on when an eagle eats your entrails,” but his blush lingers for half an hour.)</p><p>Typically, it’s easy for David to lose himself in the paintings and sculptures. Even if Joe gets antsy, starts bumping their shoulders together or talking just to hear himself talk, David can block him out and focus, can take his time in contemplation and appreciation. It’s almost a finely-tuned skill at this point. He should put it on his resume: <em> Excellent focus, especially under duress. See: Joseph Liebgott. </em></p><p>Today, though, it’s hard to look at anything for longer than a few seconds without searching out Joe. Beautiful landscapes don’t hold his attention, the lively rococo paintings bore him, and every portrait seems to pale in comparison to Joe. How can anyone think this man is handsome, or this woman is beautiful? <em> Fuck’s sake</em>, David wants to scream, <em> have you all never seen Joseph Liebgott? </em></p><p>Whatever mood has struck him today seems to have struck Joe as well. It feels like he’s always brushing his hand against David’s, pressing his palm the small of David’s back as they walk through crowds. In front of a Manet portrait, David turns his head to look at Joe, just wondering what colors and brushstrokes might be used in the construction of his face, only to find Joe already looking at him. His eyes are bright and loving and playful, and before he knows it, David is grinning and laughing in tandem with his partner from opposite ends of a gallery. A woman passing by stares at them oddly. David feels terribly sorry for her. She must have never been in love.</p><p>In the Dutch galleries, David tugs Joe towards a genre painting, a family eating a large meal together, and points to something on the table, half hidden in shadow. “Is that a menorah?” he asks.</p><p>Joe leans over his shoulder. It’s as much an excuse to press close to David as it is to inspect the painting. “Huh. I think so,” he says. “Know who it is?”</p><p>David moves over to read the wall label. “‘Unidentified, possibly depicting the family of Isaac Pereyra,’” he says. “Painted by a follower of Rembrandt.”</p><p>“Pereyra?”</p><p>“Yeah. Says he was a Portuguese merchant living in Amsterdam.”</p><p>“Huh.” Joe’s back over David’s shoulder, close enough that the security guard is eyeing them. He grumbles, “Our menorah ain’t that fuckin’ nice. That’s fuckin’ silver.”</p><p>“I’ll buy you a silver menorah when I publish my first book, how’s that?”</p><p>“Jesus, Web,” Joe says with a smirk. “I want it before I’m dead.”</p><p>“Asshole,” David murmurs. If they were alone, he’d kiss Joe. He manages to catch Joe’s eye, make sure he knows it. If the way Joe bites his lip is any indication, he absolutely does.</p><p>The next gallery over, Joe returns the favor by physically dragging David over to a seascape, a lone ship in a turbulent storm, and he’s quiet as David takes it in, inhales deeply like he can smell the sea salt. He loves these sorts of paintings, dramatic and intense and mysterious. He loves the shades of blue.</p><p>“There’s a Rembrandt seascape at the Gardner,” David says. “Have I ever shown it to you?”</p><p>“Probably. What’s it look like?”</p><p>“Big ship in the middle, people spilling out of it, sort of a golden yellow? Stormy sea?”</p><p>They’ve been to the Gardner, so David has absolutely shown Joe. Anyone else might nod and hum politely, just to act like they remember, but Joe shakes his head and says bluntly, “‘S all the same to me.”</p><p>David smiles and leans back against Joe’s chest as much as he dares. “We’ll have to go again before June.”</p><p>“If I ever go to another museum, it’ll be too soon.” The words aren’t as biting as Joe intends. His smile comes through the words.</p><p>The nature of the MFA is that David gets sucked into the endless galleries and by the time he emerges hours have passed. The patch of blue sky that was visible through the rotunda is now dark, and Joe is playing with a cigarette in the way he does when he’s hungry, like the tobacco is some sort of substitute for food. David’s not quite done, though, not yet, and he ignores the protests as he steers Joe towards the ancient art.</p><p>It’s selfish, really. Joe must be hungry by now, and he’s followed David all the way out into Boston to a museum he’d rather not be in just for David to pull him into another gallery. And David’s not even paying attention to the Roman busts or the Greek sculptures. He’s only looking at Joe, the way Joe’s profile looks against the stone, the way the warm light reflects off the stone onto his skin. Joe could be a statue himself, a picture of the ideal, if it were for the red of his lips and cheeks, the warm brown of his eyes, the dark brown of his hair. David knows he burns to the touch and his kisses sear skin, he’s soft where the stone is hard and sharp where the stone is smooth. Joe moves half hunched, curled in like a spring about to explode. Life in his veins. </p><p>“Ich liebe dich,” David calls out impulsively. It echoes through the large gallery and bounces off the walls.</p><p>Joe, for his part, does not even look up — just flips David off and says, “Fuck you.”</p><p>They get escorted out by security after a family complains, and as they walk down the marble steps towards the diner, Joe squeezes David’s hand and murmurs, “Ich liebe dich auch. Arschloch.”</p><p>The diner is lit neon in a quieter section of the city, pulsing brightly against the dark of the night and the brick surrounding it. Eliza’s working that evening, so they get a seat in the warmest booth and two free Cokes. “What’re you two doing on this side of the Charles?” she says as she sets the bottles down.</p><p>“Web dragged me all over the damn MFA. Harvard kids, am I right? He even got us kicked out.”</p><p>“That was all you, Joe.”</p><p>Joe waved a hand. “Semantics,” he says. “Can you get us the usual?”</p><p>Eliza smiles lightly, shaking her head at their bickering. “Sure thing. Try not to get kicked outta here, too.”</p><p>Joe raises his bottle at her, and she laughs as she disappears into the kitchen. </p><p>The two of them stay quiet as they wait for their meals. It’s odd now to think about those days during the war, even those few weeks right after Joe showed up in Cambridge, when the silence was always tense, when one of them had to break it into shards every time. David had wondered if this man ever shut up. He does, remarkably often, only when he feels safe and comfortable, only when his muscles relax and his body moves soft and loose. It’s a privilege to see Joe like this, he knows, so he drinks in every moment.</p><p>Joe’s eyes survey the other people in the diner, the journalist who’s always here, always has coffee and a slice of pie, the boisterous family of five at a table, a group of high schoolers with chocolate shakes. There’s something sad and fond settling in Joe’s face that David can’t decipher, but it doesn’t look bad, so David leaves him be.</p><p>The usual is grilled cheese and tomato soup for Joe and clam chowder for David. They steal bits of each other’s food and slap the other’s hands away without any real malice. Joe dips his fries into David’s chowder, and David ends up with a quarter of Joe’s sandwich, and somewhere along the line their legs get pressed together, a steady weight. </p><p>They skip out on dessert (“we have sweet bread at home, Joe”). Instead, they take two more bottles of Coke to go and walk a few blocks over to the Charles River. The street lights glitter off the water, gold against blue like the Van Gogh painting. David points it out, and Joe scoffs and says, “Enough with the art, Web. Just let the river be a river.”</p><p>So David shuts up about the art and lets the river be a river.</p><p>They stand on the banks for a while. The sky grows darker around them, and people pass, on their way home from work, on their out for the night. David barely registers them. He hardly ever registers anyone else when Joe’s involved, never really has. Their relationship is all-encompassing, arguments and kisses and quality time and all. If Joe writes, “Good luck, Harvard,” on discussion notes, he’ll inevitably lose focus, and his friends know when he and Joe are fighting because David can’t hold a conversation about anything else. There was a time before Liebgott, and it had to have been unbearably lonely.</p><p>As they wait for the train, David looks at Joe and says, “We should do this more often.”</p><p>Joe huffs moodily. “Jesus,” he says, “I was serious, this is about as much museum time as I can take —”</p><p>“No, I mean —” But David doesn’t know what he means, so he doesn’t say anything. All his fucking literature, and he doesn’t know how to say he just wants to look at Joe more often, see him move and change in the light and listen to every stupid smart thing that comes out of his mouth. </p><p>Joe doesn’t get it. David doesn’t expect him, too — he hasn’t even <em> said </em> anything — but it’s a disappointment nonetheless. That much, Joe gets, so he says, “Sleep on it, David, and tell me in the morning.”</p><p>Their train pulls in, and the train drowns out any other words left hanging.</p><p>When they are back in their apartment, Joe presses David against the door and kisses him slowly. He tries to get a read on the kiss (thanking David for the day? trying to get David to relax?), but Joe pulls away almost immediately with his sharp laugh and says, “David, liebling, can you stop thinking for two seconds and just fuck me?”</p><p>“Yeah, I think I can do that,” David says with a grin, and then Joe is biting his lip and has a warm hand pressed against his stomach, and there’s no way David can think properly now.</p><p>They make it back to their bedroom, back under their quilt and crocheted blanket, back in the spot that was so warm this morning. David wants to make it warm again, wants to lay here with Joe forever and kiss him forever and maybe have sex every other day, so the rest of the time is spent sleeping and talking and reading their respective preferred literature. David wants to count every freckle and every mole on Joe’s body and make a map of the constellations. He wants to show the world how incredible Joseph Liebgott is, how the contour of his muscles rivals the Apollo Belvedere and the red flush of his cheeks and lips and the little pink scar on his neck doesn’t compare to the colors of the Impressionists, and every story in every history painting doesn’t mean shit compared to a single words out of Joe Liebgott’s mouth.</p><p>Joe runs his hands through David’s hair, slow and careful, gentle and loving and calming. David doesn’t know how to say it all, so he murmurs, “You’re gorgeous, Joe. So fucking beautiful,” into his skin, right over his heart, even though its laughably insufficient.</p><p>Joe rolls them over so David’s being hugged into his chest. He smushes his smile into David’s neck. “Fuck, Dave.” It feels like he wants to say more, but nothing comes out. They slip into silence.</p><p>Eventually their bodies heat the sheets so that they are back in the same pool of warmth they woke up in that morning. David tries to stay up to feel Joe ease into sleep, but between the full day of walking and the comfort of the furnace of a man wrapped around him, he finds it insurmountably difficult. He falls asleep quickly and quietly, Joe’s fingers still carding through his hair.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>
  <b> <em>Having a Coke With You</em> </b>
</p><p>
  <em> is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne </em>
</p><p>
  <em> or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona </em>
</p><p>
  <em> partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian </em>
</p><p>
  <em> partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt </em>
</p><p>
  <em> partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches </em>
</p><p>
  <em> partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary </em>
</p><p>
  <em> it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still </em>
</p><p>
  <em> as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it </em>
</p><p>
  <em> in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth </em>
</p><p>
  <em> between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em> and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint </em>
</p><p>
  <em> you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them </em>
</p><p>
  <em>                                                                                                               I look </em>
</p><p>
  <em> at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world </em>
</p><p>
  <em> except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick </em>
</p><p>
  <em> which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together for the first time </em>
</p><p>
  <em> and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism </em>
</p><p>
  <em> just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or </em>
</p><p>
  <em> at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me </em>
</p><p>
  <em> and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them </em>
</p><p>
  <em> when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank </em>
</p><p>
  <em> or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully </em>
</p><p>
  <em> as the horse </em>
</p><p>
  <em>                                it seems they were all cheated of some marvelous experience </em>
</p><p>
  <em> which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I’m telling you about it </em>
</p>
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